The final disc in the MOH 10th Anniversary Collection. Now is the chance to become and experience what the Airborne accomplished in Europe during World War II (as an aside, my grandfather fought in this very theater as Airborne himself). It was also a visually striking entry in the series, courtesy of the then-new Unreal Engine 3.

2 things made this game stand out.

1) The fact that you could start anywhere in the current mission. Most FPS have pre-determined start and end points, but since you're jumping into every mission, you have the ability to choose where to begin, which provides a wealth of strategic and tactical options, not to mention attempting one of 5 "Skill Drops" in every mission.

2) Experience-based weapons upgrades. The more you use guns and grenades, the better they become. Stuff like reduced recoil, faster reloads, more ammo, and even special scopes are available.

As much care as was put into this game, you only get 6 missions, which are of reasonable length, but still very short for an FPS.

Xeogred wrote:The obvious answer is that it's time for the Dreamcast 2.

GunstarGreen and I have been working on the Towerfall co-op campaign off and on for the past six months or more...yesterday we finally beat it! Great game - one of the best "retro inspired" games of the past decade or so, I'd say.

Cyberbots is a fantastic PS1 fighter I picked up on a PSN sale a week or so ago. It is a spiritual precursor of sorts to Tech Romancer (which I have been playing today) and a great mech-based fighting title. Highly recommended!

Now here is a good old game. Starflight is a fantastic game that simulates a mission to seek out new life and boldly go where no man has gone before. The game starts with you as one of several captains who have been commissioned by the leaders of Arth. Arth is a planet inhabited by humans, Velox (insect men), Thrynn (lizard men), and Elowan (plant men) that recently discovered evidence that they did not originate on Arth; they are instead survivors of the Noah 2 expedition from the Old Empire. Furthermore, these ruins that yielded this information also has information for building interplanetary starships. You are one of several captains who are being sent to explore the galaxy and make contact with other lifeforms. However, shortly into your journey it is discovered that Arth's sun is starting to show instabilities, and if those instabilities grow the sun will have a massive solar flare that will cleanse the system of life. As a result you gain an additional objective: find new worlds suitable for colonization so the population can escape the presumably doomed world.

When you build your crew you can choose from amongst the various races of Arth, each being good at a particular specialty; it behooves you to have a mixed crew. However, the composition of your crew can have consequences: in the distant past the Thrynn and Elowan were mortal enemies and they are still extant powers in the galaxy, so relations with the Thrynn won't go well if you have an Elowan crew member, and visa versa. There are other races you will discover outside of the ones on Arth. If you can achieve successful diplomatic relations with those races you can gain valuable insight, including knowledge that the solar flares that endanger Arth are artificially generated and it might be possible to stop them.

The game shifts between a few different views. The view you spend the most time in is the navigational view; you get a top-down view of your ship as you maneuver it between planets in a system or between stars in hyperspace, and this is the view used during combat (more on that in a bit). The game requires you to fund your own expedition; you have some starting credits but you will need to gain more in order to fully upgrade your ship and train your crew to expert level. This leads into the second view, where you can land on planets and explore them in a rover to collect minerals or samples of alien life (i.e. tranq animals and bring them back to the starport). The third view is the communications view, where you converse with aliens and can do things like adapt a posture (friendly, hostile, obsequies), make statements (which can affect your relations), and ask questions.

The planetary landings have a fair amount of tension in them, as inclement weather can harm your crew and you have to be conscious of the fact that your lander only has limited fuel; if you go to far away from the ship (which is affected by terrain) you will have to hike back and get a new lander from the starport. You can also be attacked by alien life. Planetary landings not only have resources, they also can have ruins where you can discover clues or important artifacts that can boost your ship's capabilities or are necessary for completing the main quest.

The combat is pretty bare bones, unfortunately, and is probably the weakest part of the game. Since ships are on a tile grid and move when a directional arrow is pushed the only tactic is to point your nose at the enemy ship and mash the fire button until they blow up. Additionally, the start of combat can involve a lot of clumsy flailing; the game has you go through menus to go through the different jobs and their functions. Let's say you were in conversation with an alien and pissed it off so it goes hostile. You will need to exit the Comm Officer menu, go to the Navigator menu, raise shields, arm weapons, and go into combat mode (where you maneuver and fire). You can fly around with preraised shields and weapons but shields drain significant fuel while they are up and armed weapons tend to annoy aliens.

However, since fighting is rarely required if you play your cards right it doesn't detract too much from the experience. The game is very good at leaving around breadcrumbs for you to find and make your way through the various quests in the game. Several of the hints require you to get clever and figure out exactly what they're talking about, and the whole game has a great exploration feel to it.

This game, in addition to its sequel, has a spiritual sequel in Star Control 2. Star Control 2 takes all the strong points of Starflight, makes several of them even better (thanks to 7 years of better technology and game design experience), and gives it a fantastic combat system based on Spacewar. If you're a fan of Star Control 2 then I heartily recommend Starflight.

Games Beaten: 2015201620172018Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.

I am starting to get my game beating groove back on, which bodes well for this list hitting some the targets I had at the start of the year...

Battletoads Arcade is on the Rare Replay collection, which is ace. This game was new to me and quite fun - it looks like a great lost Genesis/SNES title or some such and plays like a dream, although I'm never going to approach anything like a 1cc in this one. I have never been a big Battletoads guy, but this game is the first in the series I really very much enjoyed from start to finish.

The free Fast and Furious expansion for Forza Horizon 2 was a great excuse to revisit what might be my all time favorite driving/racing game for a few hours. There's nothing in it that is especially movie-centric (which was a plus, I thought), but you get to play around with a sizable area of the main game and have fun with a good selection of vehicles including a MacLaren P1 and a Bugatti Veyron. If you haven't played Horizon 2, this is a great chance to really get a feel for it for free. If, like me, you have previously played the main game and are looking for a good excuse to spend more time with it, this is certainly worth checking out.

I am so jealous. I want that game horribly, and I may be the only person for whom Rare Replay is the Xbox One's killer, system-selling app.

It is pretty great. I think it is telling, though, that it is the first Xbox One game on my list this year and the first one since last December (Sunset Overdrive). The Halo collection is also quite good, if you have any interest in digging into that series I'd suggest playing it through on the One.

Basically everthing that could be done better from the original had a upgrade. The melee combat is more fluid and fast, you get upgrades for your guns, you get free weapons if you have a save file from the first game, there's a NG+ that increases the dificulty but let's you keep all your guns and also let's to upgrade them even further, you have a "level up" system for your health as well but after a X amount of enemies killed you gain another quarter of health on your life bar, the hidden bolts (now silver bolts) can be used to upgrade your weapons almost right away, the humor is also better they're are not afraid to be a light hearth game, and this time some jokes actually made me laught and not just smile or jiggle, the mini games are also better. Simply put anything that was done before is better now... expect for those hacking mini games... i kinda hate them.

Adventure Time: Hey Ice king why did you steal our garbage?

Very long name for a very short game. Basically this is Zelda II minus the level up system and the magic. I barelly watched the show but i think some of its charm got on the game, there where parts where i laughing and i love some of the music and the dance Fin and Jake do when you finish a dungeon.

Yeah the game is very short, about 5 hours, and is easy (you do unlock a NG+ mode that increases the enemies HP and damage), i suggest palying with just the two starting hearts and only increase the damage and speed atributes to get a bigger challenge.

Also there's a reference to symphony of the night so that automatically make's this game better.